I said to my wife, “After all these years of study and academic experience,” (I have a bachelor’s degree, two master’s degrees, a PhD, three years of medical school, and a certificate from Harvard) “after all these many years of reading and writing everything from haiku to a 700 page thesis, I think I have finally found my genre, my medium.” Pat looks up from her sewing, “Oh?” “Yes, I’m going to concentrate on the prose poem.” She looks at me quietly. “That’s nice,” she says. “Yes, I think I’ve found my genre, but I’m not positive.” “Why not?” she asks, trying to pay attention to me and trying not to prick her finger at the same time. “I had this dream last night. I was in my library at the computer writing and there was this big brown bug, a Kafkaesque bug actually, of course, I mean what else could it be, on the floor in the middle of the room and I got up and stepped on it then picked it up in a paper towel. But when I looked in the towel to see it, it wasn’t there. I mean, it wasn’t in the paper towel or on the floor anymore either. It vanished. I thought I had it, but then I didn’t, you see what I mean?” My poor wife is patiently looking at me. “Oh, sure, a bug, I see,” she says and turns back to her sewing.
This drive is taking long, I wish I had some pretzels, look how the sun shines through the trees and across the road, bright and radiating like in movies about saints or Jesus, that little blue car looks like Robin’s car, but I know it isn’t because she’s behind me about 20 minutes, blinking yellow lights remind me of that Alfred Hitchcock film, I forget the name, where the guy was hypnotized so when he saw blinking yellow lights he’d try to kill somebody, speed limit 45 but who does 45 anymore, the car in front of me passed another car, seemed kind of angry, and as luck would have it a police car was sitting right there, (that’s kind of funny, like in a Steve Martin movie or better, like in the Dukes of Hazard TV series, remember that?) the officer pulled out, put on his lights, pulled him over, but I’m not sure what he did wrong, unless it was a no passing zone, I didn’t notice or maybe he was going faster than 45. (Still, it’s kind of funny, I remember this other movie where the guy was in the road waving his arms like crazy for the other car to stop and the guys in the other car gunned the engine past him, yelling and giving him the finger, then, of course, the road ended because the bridge was out and over they went, now that was a really funny scene.) But mostly I’m glad I didn’t get stuck going up and down these hills behind any of those trucks hauling those huge logs, that would have really been a bummer.